Collecting for a funeral on a Friday Afternoon

It was a boiling hot
Friday afternoon
when I ventured forth
for some toing and froing

At the Gas station,
A phalanx of Ford F-150 pickups
were fueling up
readying for a weekend of
lifestyle enhancing activities.

Such as driving to mountains
whose glaciers had not yet disappeared
or towing boats to beaches
as yet unfouled by tar and oil

At the Credit Union
The lines were not as confident,
perhaps cause they were filled with
survivors and refugees
of the latest financial disaster
There to empty
their coffee cans full of near-worthless coins
in a vain attempt to stave of
personal fiscal apocalypse
Many were wondering
if they could hang on to the next pay day.

On the way to Starbucks
while waiting at a red light
I saw an old man
hatless in the summer sun
with a hand painted coardboard sign
asking for donations
for a "Funeral Ambulance"
whatever that was
Silly old geezer thinks I,
Even the ancient Greeks knew
that trips to the after life
can't be paid for with checks or credit cards
or a little bit of spare change.

I didn't give the hatless
old geezer any change
and drove off in my pickup
thinking that standing on the corner with
a cardboard sign asking for change
was a hell of a hard way to pay for
a six pack, pint of vodka,
or to pay for transportation
for a funeral.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

collecting for a funeral on a Friday afternoon copyright July 27, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

Not really human anymore

Not really human anymore
No heartbeat only
a gravitational pulse
No blood only
a silicon solution coursing through
permeable strata
No ribs and bones, only
beams of sandstone
No skin, only
a sheath of opaque micah.

Life is lived in speed geologic.
it takes aeons to move a millimeter
A tectonic migration trudging along,
trudging alone, ignoring and
never learning from disaster or decay.

He never listens. Why?
Others stopped listening to him aeons ago.
Now he communicates through
petroglyphs scratched on igneous rock
in a fossil of a language
no one cares to decipher

Pity that, for once
these crude scratching had great powers
could cause the rain to fall from desert sky
trick the deer to pause before the hunter's obsidian arrow

Now? Now,
sandstorms have scoured and eroded sedentary stone
moss devours the glyphs etched in granite
Few notice. Fewer care

A wandering geologist sometimes will take
a sample from the crumbling monument
An amateur archeologist still attempts to decipher
the magic runes scraped on a rock face

He no longer wonders
why they bother.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Not really human anymore copyright July 7, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

Apocalypse by key stroke

In the incestuous online world
most blissfully unaware of the danger
ignorant of the evil eyes watching
on computer terminals in
Moscow, Terehan, Pyonyang and Bejing.

Deep in their wired lairs
these Fifth Generation spiders
brew the poisons
that will paralyze or devour
anything connected to the internet.

No B-52s will be needed to drop
these bombs on their unsuspecting
targets--You, me, us.
All of us with an internet connection
an I-Phone, a copier, a nuclear submarine
have a bullseye painted on our foreheads

No bullets need fired for you to die
The malelevolence that has been bred
in the polyhedonic minds of these digital vipers
are poisons so toxic they can
make airplanes fall from the sky
nuclear missiles explode in their North Dakota silos

your execution could be caused
by a hack into the electric grid
while you lie senseless on an operating table
power failure during a heart bypass
or incineration by atom bomb
makes no difference
you are still dead.

Do not ask if????
Better to ask how or when?
Or what if anything might be done?

But you might be asking in vain
No politician will dare tell you
the nature of this peril
No corporate leader wants to pay the costs
Truthfulness is not the 21st century American way.

Imagine it for a moment--
The world ended not by a cascade of atom bombs
but with a keystroke

No one is worried because
no one really wants
to know.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Apocalypse by key stroke. Copyright July 2, 2010 by Jamie Jacks